Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Military History Visualized"
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Italys warproduction also failed because Germany took most of the Axis valuable resources (such as Romanian oil) for their own consumption, and thus leaving little over for Italian consumption. One could say that Germany was a bit parasitical on Italian warproduction, rather than co-operating. More than 2 million italians worked as guest workers in German industry 1944-45. And when Italy gained some German resources, it was never gifts, but rather exchange under harsh terms from the Germans. Germany never gave italy any StuGs or so, because they prioritized their own needs first.
Italys warproduction was like you say a failure even from the start of the war, and lack of resources was their largest handicap. And not only that, Italian industry was non-existent in World War I, and Mussolini took the lesson and tried to build up an industry, but progress was slow and Italy was not really an industrialized country making ships, planes and automobiles, but instead it was a poor country with a textile industry.
Anyhow, the needs of war forced Italy to pool her resources into building her own industry as best as she could for the sake of victory. She lost the war, but she won the peace, because those investments made Italy come out of the war with a stronger industry than she had at the outbreak of the war. Many Italians had became trained into skilled industrial workers, and the loss of human lives in the war was light, especially in comparison with her losses in World War 1.
Most of the war damages was suffered in southern Italy, while most of the industry was in northern Italy, and Germany kept control over these areas and tried to expand warproduction there as best as they could.
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@MehrumesDagon
The American "bodycount doctrine was stupid and it didn't bring America close to victory. On the contrary, it incentivised false statistics, and massacres on civilians to get the body count number up.... because if the enemy lost more men than they could replace then the war soon be won the US Military promised.
However, this promise turned out to be false. Truth is that the US Military had no idea how many Vietcongs and North Vietnamease army men were out there. So while the US Military promised a soon victory in 1967, those dreams were soon scattered with the tet-offensive in 1968. And the tet-offensive was far from this outstanding American victory like the mainstream narrative goes, because even despite the Vietcong leadership got totally wiped out in the cities and the vietcong took heavy losses, the war still progressed as before with equally high losses for the Americans as previous years. And while the Americans won the battle for the cities, they also at the same time lose all the control of the countryside as units were moving from the countryside into the cities to take them back.
So the war continued. And American solidiers got tired of this stupid bodycount doctrine, because the military leadership just saw them as expandable materia that could be replaced with new recruits if someone died when a careerist officer wanted his medals and promotions.
The stupid and costly fighting to take Hamburger hill is a typical example of this doctrine. In other wars Armies fight to gain control over vital areas - the Normandy beachhead, the Caucausus oilfields and so on.... But in Vietnam the Americans just attacked the worthless Hamburger Hill to kill Vietcongs, and then they just abandoned this hill soon after, even if many men had fought and died to get it, and within a few months would the Vietcong be back in control over it.
So all this crap made the morale in the American Army to fall apart, and fragging became common from 1969 and onwards, and the unreported numbers are surely higher than even the official statistics. And the reason was simple, the solidiers were throwing handgrenades at their own officers because they didn't wanna die in some pointless offensive.
And the search-and-avoid operations became common as well as more fraudgelent reporting of bodycounts, so that the leadership would be happy with the numbers and not try to play more aggressive and the send the men out on dangerous missions to get the bodycount number up.
All in all did the morale fall apart and a continuation of the war was no longer possible for Americas part, as the men refused to obey their own officers. So who is the blame for the defeat? The US Military and its stupid doctrine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFvcuuS5eUI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpr1HYZDzHY
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Operation Barbarossa could have ended in disasters the first weeks if the German Airforce wasn't so lucky that they could win total control of the airspace on day 1.
The German inferiority in numbers were great regardless if we talk about manpower, tanks or planes. But worst of all was the lack of artillery, which was small compared to other nations, and the Germans started the war outnumbred in artillery 12:1 and 20:1 later in the war.
So the only reason why Germany could press forward was the intensive bombings by the Luftwaffe, that destroyed lots of Russian tanks while they were sitting on the railway. Luftwaffe made many sorties per day, and had so many potential targets to bomb that they had to abandon many of them as they soon ran out of bombs to drop, because of the underestimation of the numbers of the red army.
Germany wasn't ready for this war, and even if they did know that Russian railways had wider tracks, they had forgot to plan for building a new railway network, since German trains were smaller than Russian trains and needed water and refueling stations in a shorter distance from one-another.
And the some books claim that Germany lost 2000 men per day in operation Barbarossa, but I think the numbers are higher. Anyways, only in the battle of Moscow alone did Germany lose 130.000 men - thats even more than the 100.000 men Germany lost in the wars 1939-40 against France, UK, Luxemburg, Denmark, Holland, Poland and Norway combined. And furthermore, the men lost were to a high degree NCOs, and men out of German elite Divisions such as Totenkopf and Großdeutschland.
And when Stalins winter offensive came, Germany would also lose enormous amounts of their heavy equipment. And only the over-extention and bad coordination of these attacks, as well as the failure at Kharkov in may 1942 made it possible for Germany to dominate the eastern front in 1942 as they did.
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The United States could never have won that war. Not with their stupid body counts doctrine. And the only chance for South to survive would had been a landreform, which is a political action and not a military.
There are instances when entire units had been wiped out, so I guess the definition of "battle" is a bit arbritrary. Anyways, Vietminh had control over the situation and started 90% of the firefights. And that casulity ratio have been inflated... both by politicians who wanted the public to believe that the war was progressing, and the numbers was also inflated by commanders in order to get promotions and not getting fired from their job so they can't support their family and send their kid to collage. And each unit also had a quota of enemies to kill, and had to risk their lives to fullfill it. So soliders often lied, they didn't want to die in a pointless battle like Hamburger Hill, so one of their higher ups could have his medals and rewards, while people with the ass in the grass dies for nothing. They said dead civilians was dead VC's. They said that they had a kill, but the artillery bombardment of the area had made that no body was left.
The statistics was bullshit, and America never got halfway to that magic casulity number when the enenmy losses men in higher number each month than they could find replacements. Not even with their own manipulated fakestats.
Furthermore don't I understand why casualty ratios would be important, since the Russians could defeat Germany despite taking higher losses.
And America never managed to control the countryside. In fact they completly misunderstood the entire conflict to begin with. The narrowminded brains of the American political and military leadership just saw the world as either communist or capitalist and ignored all nuance.
Ho Chi-Minh was more of a nationalist (and initially also a democrat), than he was a communist. He recieved foreign aid by America when he fought the Japanease occupation, and he was person much liked by America, and Ho Chi Minh admired America and wanted to shape Vietnam after the founding fathers of America. He was an intellectual man who had studied in Europe. But when he suggested a Vietnam with a high degree of self-governence and still being a colony under France, his moderate suggestions got rejected. America didn't want to piss off the french just to make some poor vietnamease happy.
So Vietminh had to fight the french, and they had no support from America so they had to turn the communist block to get arms for their national liberation. And after Dien Bien Phu Vietnam won their independence, and it was agreed upon that South would have a democratic election about a reunification of the country in 1956, but that promise became ignored because it was believed that Ho Chi Minh easily could have won that election.
So the war didn't have much to do with a communist invasion or the domino theory. This was a seperate event. And the conflict was about many things. It was firstly and foremost a peasant revolt against opressive landlords, it was a war against a corrupth and unjust government, it was a protest against the unpopular strategic hamlet program that forced people from their homes to go into camps where people starved and had their freedom of movement taken away, it was a war about national liberation, it was protest against Diems Catholic governments rule over a Buddist population, it was a war about revenge over the many civilian casulties inflicted by the Americans in free fire zones.
In short, it was more than just a war about imposing communism over another country.
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why wouldnt they wait to build up and get a decent military?
Military spending made up 20% of GDP before ww2, and 40% in 1941. Compare that to other countries like Germany and UK who put 70-80% into their war effort. Its simply easier to mobilize your economy for war when you have a high income per head in your country. * Italy did suceed in squeezing private consumption and transfering the recources to the government, but too much of the government spending was not devoted to war and much money had to be invested in building up the industrial capacity, with plants and machines.
why couldnt they get industrial output up to speed?
Firstly, resource constraints. Especially liquid fuels,which showed a decline in avaiblity already in 1940.
And Italy had too few firms, and too small. They had too many lines of production, fragmentation into other lines, and the plans to enlarge scale of production were too hastly made, too many types of weapon prototypes were built, and none adequatly testested and none produced in suffiecent numbers.
And the most scarce resource of all was organization.
* UK and USA had the highest incomes per head among the major powers in WW2, and they could therefore afford expensive tractors to replace human workers so they could be sent to they therefore could be sent to the army or to the factories. And they could also afford to use machines in mines and factories to increase output, and replace workers so even more men could be sent to the front.
As you see, when you got a rich country you can use machines to free up men for the fight, and therefore mobilize your economy for war more effiecently.
When you have a country like Russia with a low productivity, you need to use more men in order to produce the same amounts of stuff as a one guy with a machine. So you therefore need more men in agriculture, mining and industry just to produce the same amounts, and you got less men to spare to fight at the front. But Russia did suceed in mobilizing their economy despite these handicaps thanks to using female workers to replace the men, and by good central planning, and large pre-war stockpiles of resources vital for war production.
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Often the best men were selected for those units. And unlike normal army units did they have very much firepower at the lowest levels in the organization and stormtroopers were equiped everything from body armour, to submachine guns (which was a raririty back in those days) and they could carry flamethrowers and all kinds of modified weapons.
And they had tactics which was basicly the opposite of the common wisdom of the day - which was bombarding an area for days or even weeks and then making large assault on the enemy positions. The stormtroopers did the opposite. They tried to use surprise attacks instead of alerting their enemy ahead of time that an attack were about to come. And stormtroopers were not shy to night fighting. But they could also fighting during the day. And before an attack they tried to make a short but very intensive and powerful bombardment which surprised and chocked the enemy, and shortly afterwards would the stormtroopers attack while the enemy was trying to recover from the confusion after the artillery bombardment.
Decisions were also made by the NCOs (lower officers) who were fighting togheter with their men at the frontline - unlike ther enemies which followed orders from their Generals.
And that was a huge problem when no radio existed, so it would on average take an order 8hours to get from the Generals headquarters to reach the frontline. And then it took 8 hours for the information from the frontline to reach the General.
So it is needless to say that orders often became completly outdated once they reached the troops. The enemy could for example have brought forward reinforcements, prepared defensive positions and weather could have become bad so an order of an attack that was earlier sensible could later on become foolish and impossible to follow.
But if you are having good commanders at the front who knows the situation, then they can decide and determine the situation instead. And that was what the Germans did. Normally they would follow orders from their Generals, but the NCOs were also free to use their common sense and make changes to their plans if they deemed them necessary. And that helped the Germans to react faster than their enemies and always be one step ahead.
So I think one could say that they were a bit better than the regular infantry. But I don't think they were Rambo like elite troops. And I think their kind of warfare was a little bit revolutionary.
I don't think that there is a coincidence that Germany would invent this tactic, since the Prussians had a tradidion of mission type tactics. And another reason why they discovered this new concept was that Germany realized that the odds were stacked against her. The Allies had more resources, so Germany was not likely to win a long war. Therefore it became more important for Germany to fast find new ways of quickly winning this war. So they tried posion gas, flamethrowers, uboats, zeppelin bombraids and new better tactics of course - and stromtrooper tactics became one those new superweapons.
Neverhteless I do still think it is amazing that the ideas never gained more popularity after all the gigantic stipidity Hötzendorf, Haig, Cadorna, Enver Pasha, Nivelle, Falkenhayn and others had commited. It was incompetence beyond just incompetene, their behaviour was criminal in how wasteful they were with their solidiers lives and kept on repeating the same stupid mistakes that had lead to failure, over and over again........until the 287th battle of the Isonzo river.
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